But, my Lords, they will show you, they say, that Genghis Khan, Kouli Khan, and Tamerlane destroyed ten thousand times more people in battle than this man did.  Good God! have they run mad?  Have they lost their senses in their guilt?  Did they ever expect that we meant to compare this man to Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, or Kouli Khan?—­to compare a clerk at a bureau, to compare a fraudulent bullock-contractor, (for we could show that his first elementary malversations were in carrying on fraudulent bullock-contracts; which contracts were taken from him with shame and disgrace, and restored with greater shame and disgrace,) to compare him with the conquerors of the world?  We never said he was a tiger and a lion:  no, we have said he was a weasel and a rat.  We have said that he has desolated countries by the same means that plagues of his description have produced similar desolations.  We have said that he, a fraudulent bullock-contractor, exalted to great and unmerited powers, can do more mischief than even all the tigers and lions in the world.  We know that a swarm of locusts, although individually despicable, can render a country more desolate than Genghis Khan or Tamerlane.  When God Almighty chose to humble the pride and presumption of Pharaoh, and to bring him to shame, He did not effect His purpose with tigers and lions; but He sent lice, mice, frogs, and everything loathsome and contemptible, to pollute and destroy the country.  Think of this, my Lords, and of your listening here to these people’s long account of Tamerlane’s camp of two hundred thousand persons, and of his building a pyramid at Bagdad with the heads of ninety thousand of his prisoners!

We have not accused Mr. Hastings of being a great general, and abusing his military powers:  we know that he was nothing, at the best, but a creature of the bureau, raised by peculiar circumstances to the possession of a power by which incredible mischief might be done.  We have not accused him of the vices of conquerors:  when we see him signalized by any conquests, we may then make such an accusation; at present we say that he has been trusted with power much beyond his deserts, and that trust he has grossly abused.—­But to proceed.

His counsel, according to their usual audacious manner, (I suppose they imagine that they are counsel for Tamerlane, or for Genghis Khan,) have thought proper to accuse the Managers for the Commons of wandering [wantoning?] in all the fabulous regions of Indian mythology.  My Lords, the Managers are sensible of the dignity of their place; they have never offered anything to you without reason.  We are not persons of an age, of a disposition, of a character, representative or natural, to wanton, as these counsel call it,—­that is, to invent fables concerning Indian antiquity.  That they are not ashamed of making this charge I do not wonder.  But we are not to be thus diverted from our course.